


Various

by mozaikmage



Category: Original Work
Genre: College AU, Drabble Collection, Lolita Fashion, Multi, One-Shot Collection, these were homework but people on twitter said they wanted to read them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-21 20:25:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16583540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mozaikmage/pseuds/mozaikmage
Summary: a bunch of very short stories I wrote for school this quarter. At least three of them are gay





	1. The Party

**Author's Note:**

> collection of one shots, ppl on twitter said they wanted to read these, so here they are

Like all good parties, the first annual summer camp reunion started with five teenagers eating box macaroni and cheese at three in the morning.

“To call it box macaroni and cheese diminishes it,” Sam said, once the pot was placed in the center of the living room and eating utensils had been distributed. The pot was big enough that the five of them could sit around it and eat without getting in each other’s way. “The  _ foundation  _ came from a box, yes,” Sam continued, gesturing with a cheese-covered spoon, “but the true artistry of this mac and cheese lies in the additions. I have  _ elevated  _ this box mac and cheese to new heights.”

The “additions” were: a whole egg, scrambled, seven different spices, and three more types of cheese. 

It was pretty good, Katie thought, digging in with the plastic chopsticks Sam gave her. 

She wasn’t ready to say so out loud. This was her second time meeting Sam, and Katie was keenly aware of her presence in Sam’s house as Avi’s Best Friend (and ride). She’d resolved to not make herself too intrusive sometime during the five-hour drive upstate. They’d hit traffic  _ and _ gotten lost on the way, finally arriving at Sam’s place around midnight. Hence the three A. M. macaroni and cheese.

“When’s everyone else getting here again?” Avi asked, chewing. Her curly brown hair was pushed back behind a hairband, and she always projected a kind of confidence Katie was sure she’d never have herself. 

Sam pulled out their phone and scrolled for a moment. “I’m picking Martin, Laney and Rish up from the bus stop at noon, and the Long Islanders said they’re going to get here by three. You’re all going to help set up before noon, got it?”

The other four nodded. 

“Which Long Islanders are coming?” Hana asked. She was one of the few campers who also lived upstate, not super close to Sam, but closer than everyone making the drive tomorrow.

“Jay Gatsby,” Tim deadpanned. Sam and Hana laughed. Katie and Avi’s English classes hadn’t gotten to Gatsby yet, so they looked at each other blankly.

“But actually, check the facebook event.” Tim passed Hana his phone. Most of them didn’t have connection this far out in the boonies, but Tim lived down the road and was Sam’s friend from home, not camp, so his phone worked fine. It felt strange to be disconnected from technology like this, and Katie tried not to freak out about the fact that she couldn’t call her parents without going into town two miles away.

“Oh, Laurie’s coming!” Hana exclaimed. “I haven’t seen her in ages, I wonder how she’s doing.”

Katie’s heart rate sped up, which was embarrassing. She curled in on herself a little and tried not to think about the last time she’d seen Laurie Lu, on the last morning of camp.

Laurie had pulled Katie into a quiet corner behind the gym building and said, “I told myself if I didn’t do this before I left, I’d regret it, so.” Laurie had taken a deep breath, and pressed her lips to Katie’s. Just for a second.

They hadn’t talked about it in the two months since then. Katie hadn’t told anyone else about it either, not even Avi.

“It’s...” Sam checked their watch. “3:27. I’ll set an alarm for like 11-ish? So we have enough time to eat breakfast before I have to get the bus people.”

Sam had set up sleeping bags and blankets all over their living room, so all of them fell asleep wherever. Katie woke up early, sunlight hitting her face. She’d rolled herself up into a ball next to the television, too uncertain to stay close to anyone besides Avi.

The main event of the weekend was at the pond an acre away from Sam’s house. They spent the morning setting up tents, preparing the fire pit, and dragging food, lawn games and other necessities over to the pond. Katie’s heart kept beating too fast, and every time she remembered that Laurie would be there in a few hours the feeling of panic intensified even more.

She didn’t know what would happen when Laurie arrived.

The bus people arrived on schedule, and talking to them was a good distraction. They threw a frisbee around, and went swimming in the pond. 

Katie was floating on an inflatable unicorn and trying not to think about sunburn when she heard the distant sound of a car pulling up.

_ Oh my god, Laurie’s here, _ was her first thought, quickly followed by:  _ Oh my god, Laurie’s here and I’m in a _ bikini.

She rolled off the float and into the water, swimming up to the short dock and thinking about whether or not she should get out. A few minutes later, she heard the splash of someone jumping into the pond. Katie spun around to face the newcomer.

“Hey, Kit-kat,” said Laurie.


	2. Lenka

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the prompt was to pick a picture of a house from a list and describe what happened there so I picked the spooky russian one

 

Lenka didn’t _mean_ to open up a portal to Hell.

Lenka didn’t mean a lot of things. She lived a simple life, just herding the goats and tending to the chickens in the morning. Sometimes she’d trade for cow’s milk with Anna Petrovna next door. She didn’t have any friends.

Her brothers did the hard labor around the farm, her father sold their produce at the market, and her mother was sickly, so Lenka’s sister took care of her. Lenka was quiet, docile, not pretty or intelligent but not totally useless. Her parents had no complaints about her, nor words of praise. Sometimes it seemed like her family forgot she was there.

            One afternoon, she’d finished her chores for the day early, and everyone else in her family was busy; so she walked down to the river for something to do. When she got to the bank, she saw a man already sitting there. Just an ordinary man in ordinary clothes, fishing on a riverbank.

            Lenka crouched down next to him and started braiding a flower crown from the long-stemmed yarrow growing around her. The man turned to look at her.

            “And how are you doing, young lady?” he said, in a voice that creaked like hinges on a door.

            “Fine, thank you,” said Lenka absently, twisting the tiny white flowers together.

            “That’s not quite true, is it?” The man tapped the side of his long, pointy nose with a long, pointy finger. “Your family doesn’t appreciate you enough.”

            “I don’t do much anyway. It’s not important.”

            “You’re lonely,” the man said, in the tone of someone who’s solved a great mystery.

            The yarrow stem snapped in Lenka’s hands. “Am I?”

            The man smiled. His teeth were pointed and yellow. “I know a place where you’ll have all the friends you want, if you let me take you there.”

            “I’m _fine,_ thank you _,_ ” Lenka repeated.

            “No? Well then. How about I help make your family notice you?”

            Lenka dropped the half-finished flower crown on the grass. “How?”

            “It’s easy. Just do what I tell you.”

            Lenka _did_ ponder it, for a moment. She wasn’t stupid; she didn’t just go along with the whims of a random stranger without thinking.

            He noticed her. He wanted to help her. That was enough.

            Lenka picked up the flower crown again and wrapped a piece of meadow sage around it. “Okay. What do you want me to do?”

            But when she looked up, the man was gone, and the sun had set without her noticing.

Lenka shrugged and went home.

            The next morning, Lenka overslept and woke up to her younger sister scolding her for sleeping so late, which was embarrassing. She dropped her mother’s breakfast tray, knocked over a chicken coop, and forgot to lock the gates to the goat pen, letting them run out and terrorize Anna Petrovna’s pastures.

            “You’re so clumsy today, Lenka!” Anna Petrovna clucked, when Lenka had finished wrangling the goats again and apologizing. “Perhaps you’re getting sick.”

            “I hope not!” Lenka laughed and looked around for the man she had met yesterday.

            She spotted him behind a thin aspen tree that should not have hidden the man from view as well as it did. The man swung around the tree to come closer to her, mouth stretched into an uncomfortably large grin.

            “Well?” the man said. “Your family noticed you today, didn’t they?”

            “You mean _you_ made me do all of that?” Lenka asked. “I didn’t want to be noticed for making mistakes! I want to be appreciated!”

            The man’s mouth was entirely the wrong shape, for a person. It was unsettling, his smile. “I gave you _exactly_ what I promised to deliver, Yelena. It’s not my fault that you read too much into things.”

            Lenka thought back to yesterday’s conversation. “You said I needed to do what you told me to do, and then you disappeared...”

            “Did I?”

            Lenka gazed into the man’s eyes: deeper and blacker than they should be, with a single small, round white shine. She was reminded of staring into the family well during a full moon.

            “I went to so much effort,” the man mused, “trying to help you out, and you’re being so ungrateful. I’ll leave you another little gift, okay? You’ll see it when you go home.”

            “What kind of gift?”

            This time Lenka actually saw the man disappear, blinking out of existence before her eyes.

            At home, Lenka noticed that the inside of the front window was strangely sooty and black, so she grabbed a dishrag and started cleaning it. The window pane came off in her hands, revealing a hot, dark hole teeming with demons and devils. The gateway to Hell.

            Lenka screamed.

The whole village came running at the commotion. Lenka’s mother scolded her for doing the Devil’s bidding, while her father and all the other men in the village beat the demons back into the opening with their rakes and scythes. This wasn’t the first time demons had come to their village.

“What did he tempt you with, my dear? Riches? Beauty?” her mother asked.

Lenka couldn’t remember her mother calling her “my dear” before. Tears rose in her throat, hot and bitter with guilt and resentment. “I wanted to be noticed and appreciated,” she mumbled.

“Is that all? Really?”

The villagers had pushed the demons back and started to board up the hole they’d come from. Lenka’s mother put a kettle on the stove for everyone who had helped. Lenka spread some cups out on the table and filled the teapot.

Her mother watched, frowning like she was figuring something out. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we don’t tell you we love you often enough. Add more currant leaves.”

Lenka set the teapot down with a thump. “You love me?”

Her mother raised an eyebrow. “Of course. We’re your family. The currant leaves, Yelena.”

The portal to Hell was sealed, the tea served, and Lenka was sent to bed without supper for a week as punishment. She thought that was unfair, since she didn’t _mean_ to open the portal in the first place. But her mother and father said “thank you” to her more often, her brothers tried to include her in conversations, and her younger sister went down to the river with her to make flower crowns. Lenka was tentatively, cautiously happy.

She never saw the strange man again.

 


	3. JE Sux

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt was "historical fiction" and I read the wikipedia article on bladderball and then proceeded to pester my one friend that goes to yale to beta-read for factual accuracy  
> I accidentally typed "kuroo" instead of "henry" once while writing this and it was a dark moment in my life

 

Irwin didn’t usually wake up before noon on Saturdays. But this Saturday, the Saturday before the Yale-Dartmouth game, was special. 

His roommate of three years had kicked him out of bed and dragged him out in front of the residential college, where they joined the crowd headed towards Phelps Gate.

“Bladderball,” Henry said, still pulling Irwin along by his wrist, “is a sacred art, and 1975 will be the year JE takes the throne.”

Bladderball, Irwin thought, squinting into the morning sunlight, is some extremely unnecessary bullshit. 

Stewart from the first floor was slapping green face paint on every Jonathan Edwards College resident he saw and yelling about “team unity.” When he saw Irwin, he made a sympathetic noise and handed him a can of beer, assuming that Irwin was hungover. He wasn’t, he’d just stayed up until three in the morning writing an essay. Like a geek. 

Henry would’ve been hungover, but since it was Bladderball Weekend, he just started drinking Friday night and did not stop. He handed Irwin a stick and told him to “look sharp.” Irwin just glared, tiredly.

At exactly 11 o’clock the Bladdermaster rolled the six-foot-long ball through the gate onto Old Campus, to the sound of cheers. The Berkeley College kids grabbed it first and charged through the gate, leaving the rest of the Yale student body to chase after them.

“Just to reiterate, I did not sign up for this,” said Irwin.

“Shut up, man,” said Henry. He shoved Irwin forward.

Bladderball was a uniquely stupid activity in many ways, but Irwin’s least favorite thing about it was that there was no point system. You won if you convinced everyone else you won. The radio announced their team won, the student newspapers announced their publication’s teams won. The dorms and student clubs lacking the advantages of the press were forced to yell about their victory as loudly as humanly possible. 

Irwin stumbled as he was buffeted from all sides by half of the Yale men’s soccer team. Perhaps this is what it feels like to be the bladderball, Irwin thought, slightly delirious from sleep deprivation.

The ball slowly moved across the outstretched hands of dozens of undergraduates, bobbing along on the sea of bodies. A marching band kid opened one of the gate and rolled the ball towards Elm Street, moving the game off university grounds into the great wide world slightly beyond it.

Henry smacked Irwin on the shoulder. Irwin wrinkled his nose and tried not to gag at the smell of beer and sweat that permeated his roommate’s entire existence. 

“I’ve got an idea, man,” Henry said.

“Please don’t call me ‘man.’ I have a name.”

“An idea that will bring glory to the name of JONATHAN EDWARDS COLLEGE!” Some blonde girls in platform sandals cheered at this, and Henry took a moment to smile at them and wiggle his eyebrows suggestively.

Irwin, uninterested in girls and too tired to pretend otherwise, rolled his eyes. “What is it.”

Henry leaned in and whispered, “I’m going to get the bladderball with a  _ fishing rod. _ ”

Irwin stared. “That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Henry. You’re going to pop it. You’re going to pop the stupid bladderball and we’re going to  _ lose entirely. _ ”

“Naw.” Henry waved it off. “It’s pretty thick, I won’t pop the thing.” He then produced the fishing rod from where it had been sticking out of his backpack-- and how did Irwin not notice it before?

“As much as I don’t give a shit about this activity, I really, really don’t think you should do this. You idiot,” Irwin tacked on for good measure. 

“I’m going to do it.” Henry climbed on the shoulders of the lacrosse player who lived across the hall from them, a broad-shouldered fellow on good terms with Henry. “CHARGE, MY STEED!”

“I’m not your fucking steed!”

“CHARGE, BRADLEY!”

“I’m cancelling our friendship!” Irwin yelled after them. “I’ll move into Frank’s room at Pierson!”

“You would never,” Henry said, turning back with a grin. “You love me.”

Irwin felt the blood rush to his face and looked away.

Bradley the lacrosse player leaned forward and crouch-walked as fast as he could with nearly two hundred pounds of lanky college student on top of him. The tides of the game had shifted the bladderball in their direction, and soon they were within easy reach of the ball. 

The fishing rod swung forward, its thin, sharp end pressing into the fabric. Irwin watched, helplessly.

It did not pop, but instead slowly, tragically, deflated.

“WHO THE FUCK THOUGHT THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA?”

“That kid’s in JE colors!”

“JE SUCKS!”

“JE SUCKS!”

The chant rose up around them like a wave, everyone yelling. JE Sucks. 

Bradley dropped Henry on the ground and said, “that was really stupid, brah.”

Irwin sighed and helped his roommate up. “What did I tell you.”

“Shut up.”


	4. A Secret Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt was "college but interesting" and this time I made two of my MIT friends beta-read for factual accuracy! they both volunteer at the sci-fi library and I love them

“Wanna do a hack with me?”

Lydia slammed her book shut, startled at the sudden interruption. “Say what now?”

“A hack,” Megan repeated. “A prank on the administration! Like that globe thing they did for Earth Day in Lobby 7.”

“I know what a hack is, I’m not a freshman. I just wasn’t expecting you to ask me to pull one.” Lydia stuck a pencil between the pages of  _ Thud!  _ to mark her place and blinked at Megan, sitting behind the librarian desk several feet away.

It was the end of Megan’s shift in the MIT Science Fiction Society library, and as usual, she and Lydia were the only people there. Megan was blasting anime soundtracks while working on her problem sets, and Lydia was reading her way through the library’s massive catalog. It was peaceful, Lydia thought. Probably the calmest part of her week. After Megan locked up for the night they sometimes grabbed dinner together, and that was nice too. 

“I don’t mean a project, we’d need a lot more people for that. I was thinking more exploration,” Megan was saying now, pushing a lock of straight black hair behind one ear.

“Exploring what?”

Megan shrugged. “I dunno. We could climb Kresge?” Kresge was the auditorium at MIT, large, bulbous, and resembling a modernist metallic dessert. Or maybe a fish. Megan slid her laptop into her backpack and gestured at Lydia’s book. “You gonna check that out?”

Lydia slid the book over and watched as Megan recorded the book in the library catalog. “Why should we climb Kresge?”

“Because it is there,” Megan said, making airquotes with the hand that wasn’t holding the book. “And it would be fun?” She smiled at Lydia hopefully, brown eyes sparkling with excitement.

Ever since they met at freshman orientation, Lydia had never been able to say no to Megan. “Sure,” Lydia said. “What time should I meet you there?”

So that was how Lydia found herself hopping back and forth on the brick path in front of the auditorium at 2:30 in the morning, dressed in dark colors and shivering from the night chill.

Megan came bounding up from the direction of McCormick, carrying a backpack. “Hey! You made it!”

“Of course.”

They stared at the place where the pointed curve of the roof almost met the ground. 

“Do you wanna go first?” Lydia asked after a moment.

“Let’s try it together,” Megan said, and put one foot on the roof. She stuck an arm out to steady herself. Lydia took it without thinking.

Once you got over the dark, the cold and the fear of falling off, climbing Kresge wasn’t really that bad, Lydia decided. Megan’s warm, reassuring presence helped.

“My grandma in China has a tree in her backyard. I used to climb it every time I visited, since I was like, five years old,” Megan told her. “I’m a climbing  _ pro. _ ”

“Very reassuring.”

“I know.”

They crawled up along the edge of the roofline and then walked from the raised edge to the bulging center of the roof.

Megan pumped a fist in the air. “We did it!”

“We did,” Lydia agreed. “And I don’t see any security people around either, so we managed it without getting caught!”

“Always so practical, Lyds.”

“One of us has to be.”

Megan beamed at Lydia, her eyes shining and cheeks flushed from the combination of cold air and exercise. In the darkness of the night, looking at Megan felt like staring into the sun.

Lydia glanced down at the ground for a second and felt the fear of falling shoot through her again. She looked back up. “What’s in your backpack?”

“Oh!” Megan pulled out a small blanket, bags of snacks, and two bottles of iced tea. “I thought we could...have a picnic up here? I didn’t realize how cold it was going to be, so if you wanna go back to bed I don’t blame you.”

Several things clicked into place. “Megan...was this a  _ date? _ ”

Megan laughed nervously. “I mean, I was thinking of it as a date. Would you like it to be?”

“You seriously thought climbing a building in the middle of the night would be a good first date?”

“Well, when you put it that way...”

Lydia leaned in and kissed Megan briefly on the mouth, pulling back after only a few seconds. 

Megan blinked a few times. “What.”

“I like you too,” Lydia told her, and nothing had ever felt easier.

They ended up using the blanket Megan brought for warmth, curling into each other and talking about nothing much until Megan was nodding off on Lydia’s shoulder.

“In the book I’m reading now,” Lydia said, “the dwarves have signs for different kinds of darkness in the mines. The following dark, the summoning dark.”

“What kind of darkness would you call this?” Megan yawned.

Lydia considered it. “A secret dark. A darkness just for us.”


	5. Stars Shining Bright

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> final! prompt was culture, task was to write this in 750 words and then expand to 1500. culture I picked was lolita fashion bc I was Really Into That once upon a time

Kay is woken up on her second day in Tokyo by her girlfriend shoving her out of bed and onto the floor.

“I don’t know what I expected,” Kay sighs from the floorboards, while Annie turns off her alarm and checks her social media. “Is it embarrassing to say I’ve missed you waking me up like this?”

“No, because I’ve missed it too. I’m always thinking about how much I wish you were here. And now you are!” Annie spares a moment to beam at Kay before hopping up and going to her closet. “It’s too hot to layer, so go for a one-piece or skirt. What’re you thinking today? We should twin!”

“I don’t have anything with the same print as you do, and most of my Lolita stuff is offbrand.” Kay favors quirkier, more offbeat designers from China and Korea over the big Japanese brands. Offbrand is cheaper, even though some snobby Lolitas think anything not made in Japan isn’t real Lolita fashion.

“I was there when you took your wardrobe post pics, babe, I know exactly what you have. Unless you got anything new in the last three months?” Annie pulls out two skirts in two shades of red and holds them out in front of Kay. “Did you bring anything that matches either of these colorways? You like red, right?”

Half an hour later the two of them are dressed in not quite but almost matching red skirts, full bell-shaped petticoats, bloomers, socks, white blouses and red-and-white accessories. Annie’s hair is longer than it had been when she first left for her study abroad, and instead of stuffing it under a pastel wig she just brushes out her blonde waves and leaves it loose. Kay does the same, unclipping a bow from the front of her skirt and fastening to the top of her head.

“You should borrow my violin purse, it matches your print better than the heart one does,” Annie says, passing the item over. 

“Thanks. Here, try this lip color.”

I have missed this, Kay thinks, crowding in front of the bathroom sink with her girlfriend. The effortless sharing, the sheer joy of bonding over their shared interest.

They take outfit selfies in front of Annie’s floor-length mirror. “Do you get this nice mirror in your room because Bunka’s a fashion school?” Kay jokes.

“Probably.” Annie shrugs and sticks her head out into the hallway. “I’m going to ask Micchan from next door to take a picture of us together for your blog.” Annie has never been big on the blogging part of the Lolita fashion community, preferring more image-focused platforms, but Kay took to the formal style of posting easily, and her blog about Lolita fashion on a college budget got hundreds of unique visitors every day.

Micchan takes their picture and Kay is awed at how much Annie’s Japanese has improved in just a few months. She’s chatting with Micchan fluidly, giggling about something Kay can’t grasp.

Annie says goodbye to her friend and grabs Kay’s hand to drag her out of the dorm. “I have a full day planned for us, let’s go!”

They grab a quick breakfast from a convenience store and hit up what seems like every tourist sight in the Shinjuku district. Kay’s camera memory card is almost full.

“I thought we were gonna go to Harajuku?” Kay asks, on their way out of Meiji park.

“That’s where we’re going now! I saved it for later because a  _ certain store _ opens at 1.” From the way Annie’s wiggling her eyebrows, there was only one store it can be. Kay sucks in a breath.

Harajuku’s Takeshita street is everything Kay thought it would be, just like the photos and movies. Hundreds of people, all astoundingly dressed. A woman in a fluffy white lace coordinate gives Kay and Annie a cool nod, acknowledging their kindred spirit. Kay’s used to drawing attention with her clothing choices, but in Harajuku, she’s nothing special. It’s refreshing.

“You know no one’s ever heard of the Nabokov book here?” Annie asks, walking as quickly as her platform heels allow. “They just call it Lolita fashion because it’s always been called that.”

“But it sounds so weird in English.”

“That’s our burden to bear, Kay-chan.”

“ _ Kay-chan, _ Annie, seriously?”

Annie pulls Kay firmly by the hand and leads her through the crowd to their destination: Closet Child. The secondhand Gothic and Lolita clothing store.

Kay recognizes the storefront from the store’s website, where she’d bought all of her Japanese-brand clothes. She gasps in spite of herself. 

“Lolita’s on the second floor. First floor’s Vivienne Westwood and third floor’s Goth-punk. Come on!” They run up the narrow staircase to the second floor.

“No photos,” Annie warns. So Kay resorts to committing the scene to memory. Clothes are organized by price, by type, by color. A rainbow of lace and ruffles and patterns. She runs her fingers over the soft cotton fabric reverently, feeling that same thrill she always feels when unpacking a dress shipped to her home in Boston, but even more intensely.

Kay made a list of things she wanted to get in Japan earlier, which helps focus her now. She takes a breath and walks over to the rack of one-piece dresses, flipping through them for a black dress with a cherry or strawberry border print. A Metamorphose-brand cherry print catches her eye, and she immediately looks at the price. Less than 200 dollars. For a one-piece.

“Is this on sale?” Kay whispers. Annie, going through the skirts along the window points and says, “Nah, sale rack is over there. I know, it’s insane how cheap this stuff is here, right?”

180 dollars for a dress isn’t really cheap, per se. But in a world where dresses regularly go for over 300, it’s a steal. Kay carefully takes the dress off the rack. An employee materializes at her side with a little plastic basket, and she puts the dress in with a grateful smile.

Annie squeals in a way that has the shopkeepers turn towards her in concern. “Kay! Babe! Look what I found!” She slowly pulls out a ivory skirt with jumper-style straps.  It features a wide wraparound print illustrating the story of Red Riding Hood. A 2012 design from the brand Baby, the Stars Shine Bright. It’s been on Kay’s wishlist since its release date two years earlier. She never expected to see it in person.

“There’s a little rip at the zipper, but I can totally fix it,” Annie’s saying, but it sounds distant and far away to Kay, who’s still staring at the dress. Every lace edging, every polka-dot bow, seems perfectly designed to accentuate the lush, extravagant print. It looks as expensive as it probably costs, Kay thinks, only to glance at the tag and see a smaller number than she expected.

“It’s destiny.” Annie beams. “You should get it.”

Before Kay can say anything else, Annie’s talking to the shopkeeper in rapid-fire Japanese. 

“Kiyoko-san says you can try it on!”

Kay’s blouse is bright white, so it looks odd with the ivory-toned jumper-skirt over it. But the dress fits. Annie helps her tie the corset lacing and bow in the back.

“It looks amazing, babe.”

Kay doesn’t end up getting anything else; all the other dresses in the store seem to fade in comparison. Annie picks up some accessories and a more casual cutsew shirt made from stretchy jersey-knit fabric for lounging in. 

“I wish I could wear it out, but the rest of my coord doesn’t match at all,” Kay confesses as they step out into the sunlight once more.

“That’s too bad,” Annie says. “You can think of at least three coords you can make with the JSK though, right?”

“Of course. Maybe I’ll even wear it tomorrow.” Kay always shops according to the three-coordinate rule; when you’re spending so much on a single item of clothing, you have to know how you’re going to wear it. 

Annie drags Kay to a crepe stand on the far end of Takeshita Street, rambling about her fashion design classes and how exciting Tokyo is compared to Boston. They see a handful of other girls in Lolita on the way, one in all-black and a few in candy-patterned pastels. Kay smiles at them on instinct, and is surprised when they smile back. 

Annie holds both of their crepes while Kay takes a picture for her blog. “Do you want to hang around here some more or check out Ikebukuro? They have this one store there, nine stories of anime merch.”

“Isn’t Ikebukuro where  _ Durarara!! _ takes place? I want to see that.”

Annie grins. “I know exactly where to go.”

“I still haven’t finished the second season,” Annie explains as she drags Kay through the Tokyo subway to Ikebukuro station. “But I know you really like it, so I looked up some locations from the show and how to get to them so we could see it when you visited.”

Kay knows they’re in public, and they’re both girls, and they’re in a foreign country, but at that moment she can’t make herself care. She pulls Annie closer and kisses her. “I love you so, so much.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *uragiri no yuuyake plays softly in the distance*

**Author's Note:**

> talk to me on [tumblr](http://cubistemoji.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](http://twitter.com/mashazart/)  
> 


End file.
